Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hughes, Jabez
HUGHES, JABEZ (1685?–1731), translator, younger brother of John Hughes (1677-1720) [q. v.], was for some years one of the receiver's clerks in the stamp office. He died on 17 Jan. 1731, in the forty-sixth year of his age, leaving a widow, who accompanied the wife of Governor Byng to Barbadoes, and died there in 1740, and an only daughter.
Hughes translated 'The Rape of Proserpine, from Claudian, in three books, with the Story of Sextus and Erichtho from Lucan's Pharsalia, book 6' (London, 1714, 8vo; another edition, corrected and enlarged, with notes, 1723, 12mo); Suetonius's 'Lives of the XII Cæsars,' with notes (London, 1717, 12mo, 2 vols.); and several novels from the Spanish of Cervantes, which were published anonymously in Samuel Croxall's 'Select Collection of Novels and Histories' (second edition, London, 1729, 12mo, six vols.) His 'Miscellanies in Verse and Prose' were collected by his brother-in-law, William Duncombe [q. v.], and published for the benefit of his widow in 1737 (London, 8vo). The dedication to the Duchess of Bedford, though signed by his widow, 'Sarah Hughes,' was written by John Copping, dean of Clogher (Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, 1814, viii. 268). Two short pieces written by Hughes are given in John Nichols's 'Select Collection of Poems' (1780), vi. 39-40.
[Preface to Hughes's Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, 1737; John Duncombe's Letters by Several Eminent Persons Deceased (2nd edit. 1773), i. 160; Calamy and Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial, 1803, iii. 365-7; Brit. Mus. Cat.]